A fact-finding team
of human rights activists and lawyers that visited riot-hit Malegaon returns
with disturbing evidence of a "complete communal-isation of the police and
paramilitary forces"

(The fact–finding team visited
the riot-affected areas of Malegaon, the relief camps in Satana town, the
affected nearby villages of Patne, Ajang, Wadner (Khakhurdi), Nampur, Talavde
and Antapur. The team members met the victims of police firing and of attacks by
communal organisations, the additional superintendent of police (Rajvardhan),
local journalists, politicians and social workers. It also visited the Farhan
Hospital.

The members of the team were
Vijay Hiremath (advocate); Kannan Srinivasan, (researcher); Sakharam Sathe and
Jennifer Coutinho (members, Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights,
CPDR); Sanober Keshwaar and Angel Mary (members, Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana).

Excerpts from the report:

Malegaon, in the Nashik district
of Maharashtra, is one of the three main powerloom towns in the state. It has a
population of over 6.5 lakhs of which over 70% are Muslims. The Union home
ministry has since long described Malegaon as an "ultra–sensitive"
spot…

On October 19, Nihal Ahmed, a
former Janata Dal MLA, led a morcha in the town to protest against
American bombing of Afghanistan. The processionists were arrested but later
released by the police. This sparked rumours all over the city that all Muslims
were supporters of Osama bin Laden and, therefore, of terrorism. On the one
hand, these incidents reinforced the stereotyped image of Muslims as terrorists
and anti–nationals in the minds of common Hindus. And, on the other hand, in
the minds of common Muslims it created a sense of being wronged and persecuted
unfairly.

After Nihal Ahmed’s morcha, an SRP van was stationed outside the Jama
Masjid in Malegaon for the Friday prayers on October 26. As people were coming
out of the mosque after the Juma prayers, a young man started distributing
pamphlets in Urdu. Entitled "Be Indian, Buy Indian", it
exhorted Indians to boycott American and British products in protest against the
bombing of Afghanistan. (Rajvardhan, the additional superintendent of police,told the fact–finding team that he found nothing objectionable in the
pamphlet). An SRP constable grabbed a pamphlet from the distributor, tore it up
and assaulted the man. The SRP then arrested the pamphleteer and dragged him
towards the van. This angered the crowd who immediately rushed to get him
released.

Hearing the commotion, the imam
of the Jama Masjid, Mufti Mohammed Ismael, rushed out of the Masjid and tried to
disperse the crowd around the SRP van. He was soon joined by Suresh Ahire, the
superintendent of police, RK Rathod, the deputy superintendent of police and
Sheikh Rashid, the Congress MLA of Malegaon. The moment Sheikh Rashid arrived on
the spot, however, a section of the crowd started shouting and clamouring for
him to go back and became restive. They managed to get the pamphleteer released
from the clutches of the police. In the melee, this section also damaged part of
a Navratri pandal which had been put up near the masjid.

The police then lathi-charged the
crowd and chased them out of the Jama Masjid area. The crowd responded to this
attack by pelting stones at the police and the police kept lathi–charging and
pushing them back.

It is reported that no sooner had
the crowd been chased out of the Jama Masjid area by the police than a huge
group of Hindus led by Dada Bhuse (the chief of the Shiv Sena-spawned outfit
called Janata Raja) arrived on the scene and held a demonstration to protest the
damaging of the Navratri pandal by the Muslims. Soon thereafter, this crowd
moved towards the Sangameshwar masjid, destroying Muslim shops in front of it.
Their numbers swelled as they went along leaving a trail of selective
destruction in their path.

In the meanwhile, the police
continued the lathi–charge on the gathering and drove them towards the Kidwai
Road and Mohammed Ali Road area — which is the main Bazaar area of Malegaon
city and is about half a kilometre away from the Jama Masjid. As Friday was
bazaar day in Malegaon, the gathering from the mosque was joined here by many
people who had come to shop in the bazaar.

Police Firings:

According to the findings of the
team, the stone throwing by certain elements in reaction to the persistent and
brutal lathi charge provided an excuse for the police to open fire at this
point. They fired a total of 35 rounds, leaving three dead and 10 injured. One
bullet pierced Bilkees Bano (52) in the chest while she was hanging out her
washing on the first floor balcony of her house on Mohammed Ali Road. She died
in hospital soon thereafter.

Ijaz Baig Aziz Baig, the
president of the Malegaon Municipality, was witness to the police firing. He saw
a young man on the street, later identified as Ibrahim, get shot in the head and
immediately slump to the ground. Whilst people were running helter–skelter,
another young man came to pick up the bleeding Ibrahim but he, too, was shot
down. This young man was identified later as Shafique Azizullah, a vendor of
readymade garments. The police did not bother to pick up the dead and injured
and take them to hospital. It was the people who did this.

According to Baig, the tehsildar,
Sapkale, and the SP, Suresh Ahire, were present on the spot at the time of the
firing. According to the police, a section of the crowd torched the Gupta Dairy
on Mohammed Ali Road after bringing out all the property from inside the shop
and burning it on the street. This action of certain elements in the crowd is
cited as the justification for police firing.

The news that three people had
been killed in police firing and several others wounded spread like wildfire and
the Muslim populace got incensed. Consequent to this, the imams of all the
masjids in Malegaon began to call the azaan, beginning that evening and
right through the night. This is a practice in times of emergency to give
succour to the people, as in time of floods, earthquakes, etc.

The police opened fire yet again
on Friday night in the Azad Nagar area. They claim they were challenged by a
stone–throwing mob of Muslims. Thirty–two rounds were fired here, leaving
two young men killed—Mohammed Salim Shahadat Hussain and Rafique Shah Hamid
Shah, both loom workers. Three more youth were hit by bullets but they survived.
Two more Muslim youth, Ahmed Khan Murad Khan and Sheikh Riyaz Sheikh Safiuddin
were killed on Sunday, October 28, when the police opened fire once more, near
the Mira Datar Dargah and a nearby masjid.

Murders during the riots:

Apart from the twelve people
killed in the police firings, two people, one Hindu and one Muslim, were
murdered in the midst of the riots. On the night of Friday, October 26, the mob
that destroyed the houses and the powerloom units in Diamond Mill compound,
stabbed to death a former municipal councillor named Khalil Ahmed Haji Mohammed
Saeed. His murder was witnessed by his brother, Jalil, who himself too was
attacked but survived. Jalil, in his statement to the police, implicated Dada
Bhuse and a former Shiv Sena councillor, Suresh Gawli, in the murder of his
brother.

The second victim of the riots,
Bapu Bacchav, a middle–aged Hindu rickshaw driver and a former vice-president
of the Shiv Sena in Malegaon town, was murdered at Kalikutti sometime in the
night. The identity of his assailants is not known.

Systematic and selective
destruction of property:

The police estimate that in
Malegaon town, the total property losses amounted to well over Rs 13 crore. The
police and everyone the team spoke to admitted that most of the property
destroyed and looted belonged to Muslims.

The role of the police

That the prejudice of the police
against Muslims in general can take a very dangerous and destructive turn was
evidenced in the Bombay riots of 1992–93 and is well documented in the reports
by independent bodies as well as the Srikrishna Commission. That public
condemnation and criminal prosecution (albeit delayed and half–hearted) have
not dimmed the police’s hatred of Muslims can be seen in their behaviour in
Malegaon.

a. Most people of Malegaon whom
we interviewed feel that had the SRP not suppressed the distribution of the
pamphlet, and had the police not resorted to a brutal lathi charge so
insensitively in response to the demand of the crowd to release the arrested
pamphleteer, events would not have taken an ugly turn.

b. There were numerous incidents
of arson and looting of shops and houses over the three days of rioting.
However, visits to the affected areas revealed the fact that most of the
property destroyed was that of Muslims. This fact was also corroborated by the
police. But all those who died in police firing are Muslims, without a single
exception. When the team asked Rajvardhan to explain why the police did not stop
the rioters under the banner of Janata Raja, a Shiv Sena front, he could not
offer any explanation.

c. Many Muslims we met said that
when they rang up the police station for help when their property was being
destroyed, the policeman would ask them their names and, on hearing that they
were Muslims, promptly put the phone down. If at all they answered, they replied
that they could not help due to lack of forces.

d. Several shops of Muslims right
outside and next to the Chawni Police Station have been completely gutted. This
is a strange sight as one expects that the police should normally take prompt
action against any arson, at least in their own backyard. Here is an evident
case for disciplinary action against the concerned policemen.

e. Some Muslims who had lost
their shops in the arson and looting complained that even though policemen were
present on the scene, they did not lift a finger to stop the destruction from
taking place.

f. None of the bodies of the
people who died in the police firing were picked up by the police. It was left
to the public to do so.

Attacks in the villages sparked by wild rumours

The attacks in the villages have
been solely on the Muslim community. Muslims are a minority in the villages of
Malegaon taluka and the other nearby talukas such as Satana, Kalvan and Deola.
There are, on an average, about 25 families of Muslims in each village. From
October 27 onwards, mobs of around 500 Hindu youth led by the Shiv Sena and
Janata Raja (a Sena front) leaders went on a looting and burning spree from
village to village. People were mobilized by the spread of vicious rumours that
Muslims had molested, raped and disfigured Hindu women in Malegaon and had
destroyed mandirs and killed a pujari.

These rumours, spread by some
people who travelled from village to village in a vehicle, were totally false
and fabricated and no evidence was found in their support. Rajvardhan
categorically stated that no such incidents of rape or molestation or
disfigurement had taken place, nor had any pujari been killed.

People also told the team that
one Dr. Surana, the president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of Deola Taluka,
addressed a public meeting in Deola on October 29 where he described how Muslims
had mutilated Hindu women in the name of bin Laden.

The mob would descend on the
village shouting slogans like ‘Jai Bhavani’ and ‘Jai Shivaji’
armed with petrol cans, swords and lathis. Local recruits would identify houses
of Muslims which would then be surrounded and threatened. The Muslims inside
would be permitted to slip away to safety from the door and after that, the mob
would loot the house, smash the TV if there was one, take away all the grain,
and then burn any vehicle the family owned. Furniture and other possessions were
either brought out into the street and burnt or were destroyed in the house
itself.

In the villages where the attacks
have taken place, the local masjid has been damaged in almost all cases
we investigated. In Nampur village (Indira Nagar), a madrassa where 150
Muslim youth were studying has been damaged.

There are some cases of beating
up some Muslim women by the Janata Raja troopers in some villages. In Nampur
village, two women named Sabiha Moosa Saeed (who is six months’ pregnant) and
Shugrahi Raj Saeed were chased out of their home by the attackers and beaten
with big sticks. When the team met these women, their bodies bore marks of the
beating.

But by and large, the attackers
concentrated on first scaring the Muslims so that they would flee their homes;
and then looting and burning their property. Local journalists and social
workers in Malegaon told us that the policy of the Janata Raja is not to kill
Muslims, but to finish them off economically and frighten them into submission
as second–class citizens.

Most Muslims have not yet
returned to their villages since they fled after the attacks. Those whom we met
in the refugee camps in Satana were feeling very insecure and were not confident
of going back to live in their villages. They have lost everything in the
attacks and the subsequent looting and burning. Some of them are seriously
contemplating shifting to the city where they will be comparatively safer in
Muslim localities. Those who have land in the villages will most probably sell
it off at throwaway prices and then shift to the city.

There have been many instances of
communal amity in the midst of this communal madness. In most villages, Hindu
neighbours gave shelter to Muslim families on the run from the looters and then
escorted them to safety. For example, Anjana and Suresh Nikam of Ajang village
gave shelter to ten Muslim neighbours during the attack on October 27. When they
intervened to stop the attacks on the Muslims, they were threatened with death
by the marauders. In Wadner village, some Hindu families gave shelter to their
Muslim neighbours and then escorted them to their relatives’ houses in
Malegaon.

In Malegaon Camp area, Dr.
Yeshwant Deore risked his life to escort young Muslim children home and young
men of a Muslim family that resides in his area, which is predominantly Hindu.
Because of this, he was accosted in the street and asked whether he was a Hindu
or not and told if he were a Hindu, then he should not be helping Muslims.

In the village of Ajmer Soundana
in Satana taluka, no attacks took place because the police patil and sarpanch
of the village took prompt action by telling each and every family not to
believe rumours which were floating about and not to harm their Muslim brethren
in any way.